Javelin drophead

[RogerT]

It's me again, were there two of these? The picture I have sent to you shows the hood before the rear wings commence with an elongated boot area and dickie seats in the boot, the car in the picture you have posted appears to be a four seater with the folded hood appearing to be well behind the rear wing and difficult to tell properly but it appears to be a four seater? Roger

[Peter Holden]

Yes!
The one you first refered was the Carlton Coachworks version. It was produced for Jowetts and was exhibited at the London Motor Show in 1948. It was maroon in colour. This car was restorded some years ago. It is not really a car to be used as, as Keith says, a lot of it's ridgity had been removed.

In 1951 a four seater verson was exhibited at the Geneva Motor Show. This was produced by the Swiss Coahbuilder Worblaufen and I think for the Dutch or Danish Jowett agent and not by the Jowett Company.

[george garside]

the photo with the comment 'it looks a lot better with its top down' is not of the same car, i.e. it is not of the dicky seater built/converted by Carlton Coachworks.

It is in fact a rather nicer creation by Worblaufen that was exhibited at theGeneva show in march 1950. At least one ( in addition to the show model, was made & supplied to a Swiss customer by the Jowett Distributors in Zurich. It certainly had the sort of 'continental falre, that was somewhat lacking in the Carlton Coachworks drophead.

I was offered the Carlton car for I think around £50 in the early to mid sixties but had nowhere to keep it so it deteriorated until bought by Dennis Cremer. It had very ugly angle iron reinforcement to the centre of the chassis .which according to Horace Grimley was fitted by experimental to counteract a lack of rigiddity resulting from Carltons removal of the roof etc without adding due reinforcement. Presumably the Swiss coachbuilder found a better way of maintaining rigidity.

george,

[The Bradford man]

There was a member in the club here in nz who built a replica based on one the drop head Javs.

[george garside]

any more info or photos of this conversion and is it still alive!

george

[RogerT]

Thank you all for the input, understand the cars better now, I have been on the Worblaufen website recently and found some really interesting stuff but the Javelin unfortunately wasn't listed. Agree that the Worblaufen car is the more attractive of the two as they had a system to keep the hood cover neat and low but there was a certain charm with the Carlton car having the Dickie seats as well. We have had a member recreate the MO Convertible recently but the reinforcing that he placed under the car was far superior to anything that Nuffield would have considered and it was all done in a box section addition that ran along the belly of the floorpan and over the rear axle, he uses the car for weddings. Much appreciated information here so all that is left for me to do later this year is to take a saw to a Lansdowne Javelin, problem being now do I get another and do them both! Roger